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It’s not that Kagi is better at search, it’s that Kagi is cleaner and more efficient. It doesn’t do bullshit dark patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of yo

It’s not that Kagi is better at search, it’s that Kagi is cleaner and more efficient. It doesn’t do bullshit dark patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide valuable tools. I’m a huge fan of the lenses feature. Specifically for technical searches… I can filter for forums only or PDFs only or academic stuff only.

pierat 3y ago
> It’s not that Kagi is better at search, it’s that Kagi is cleaner and more efficient. It doesn’t do bullshit dark patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide valuable tools. Yet. Google did the same originally. Super clean, just delivered whatever was searched for; no more, no less. When Kagi gets a taste of how much money is available for tracking and profiling users. and theyll start small. And since you have to be logged in to do searches, everything is already pre-tracked. Then its only a matter of recording and selling (on the sly) to data brokers. I used not to be this jaded. But its watching the same thing again and again is why I wait for it this time around. All good things do indeed come to an end.
- askvictor 3y ago
  Not just that, but it's not really on the radar of SEO. If they get big, SEO will probably lead to the same enshitification as happened to Google.
  - freediver 3y ago
    I don't think it can. What would the financial motive be? With Google it is more ads with Adsense on their crappy SEO site. With Kagi, we actively downrank such sites out of existance.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      SEO also has the purpose to rank your website high so that you can sell your products. A huge part of the internet has nothing to do with ads, but businesses selling their products and services
      - whs 3y ago
        I think if they want to sell to me and ads&trackers harm their SEO, it'd at least make the internet a little bit more private. That or it'll be a cat and mouse chase like cname cloaking/proxying rendering those harder to statically detect.
        Gustomaximus 3y ago
        True for you, but there are billions of people out there and your attitude is a tiny minority for what they would lose elsewhere.
      - dazc 3y ago
        Boss of wonderful search site seems to be unaware?
        eitland 3y ago
        Unlike Google who has incentives to promote the spam Kagi has incentives to fight the spam. Also Kagi lets me blacklist domains myself if I want stricter rules than Kagi already provide.
    - askvictor 3y ago
      The financial motive is to get people looking at your website so you can sell things. SEO has always been an arms race, and I don't see how it can not be that. Occasionally there's a paradigm shift that causes one side to get massively ahead (e.g. the original Pagerank). But eventually things settle back down.
- freediver 3y ago
  Kagi founder here. You have my assurance this will not happen. Life is too short and I am not spending 10 years of my life building yet another ad-based search engine.
  - selcuka 3y ago
    I trust you will not, but what about after you exit? Anyway, you or someone else will probably start a new search engine, and we will start again. It's best to enjoy it until that happens.
    - pierat 3y ago
      I believe the founder, freediver. In the case of Radio Shack, they too made a promise never to sell or give the data to other entities. The CEO even fought for that in bankruptcy court. The judge deemed that the user data was worth a significant sum, and the judge screwed everyone over for the debtors. Once you capture the data, it's a toxic but valuable asset. And there's always someone willing to go to any end and use it, regardless the promises. And it may full well be someone who has power over you, and you'd never know until it's too late. (I've done my share of medical and sensitive queries. The really sensitive ones go through I2P or Tor in a VM. I'm not willing to give that knowledge to anyone.)
      - mewse 3y ago
        Since you're bringing up "capturing the data", it's worth pointing at Kagi's privacy policy, the very first point of which is this: > * Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account. https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy Additionally the search page itself displays this notice: > Your searches are always private. We do not see them and they are not associated with your account The "captured" user data you seem to be concerned about doesn't appear to actually exist in this case; the data is quite explicitly not being captured.
      - selcuka 3y ago
        > I believe the founder, freediver. Oh, don't get me wrong. I believe them, too. My point was if they ever sell the company, the buyer might change the privacy statement and start collecting/selling information from that point on. I didn't mean the new owners would necessarily have access to the data collected previously.
- dgb23 3y ago
  All good things do come to an end. There’s no argument here. But I think we’re in a different situation when people are willing to pay monthly for search. There is also exactly 0 risk involved here for a consumer. If this product stops being worth your time and money, just stop using it? It’s not comparable to say, buying a service or product that you build on top of. No lock-in in that sense.

pierat 3y ago

> It’s not that Kagi is better at search, it’s that Kagi is cleaner and more efficient. It doesn’t do bullshit dark patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide valuable tools. Yet. Google did the same originally. Super clean, just delivered whatever was searched for; no more, no less. When Kagi gets a taste of how much money is available for tracking and profiling users. and theyll start small. And since you have to be logged in to do searches, everything is already pre-tracked. Then its only a matter of recording and selling (on the sly) to data brokers. I used not to be this jaded. But its watching the same thing again and again is why I wait for it this time around. All good things do indeed come to an end.

askvictor 3y ago
Not just that, but it's not really on the radar of SEO. If they get big, SEO will probably lead to the same enshitification as happened to Google.
- freediver 3y ago
  I don't think it can. What would the financial motive be? With Google it is more ads with Adsense on their crappy SEO site. With Kagi, we actively downrank such sites out of existance.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    SEO also has the purpose to rank your website high so that you can sell your products. A huge part of the internet has nothing to do with ads, but businesses selling their products and services
    - whs 3y ago
      I think if they want to sell to me and ads&trackers harm their SEO, it'd at least make the internet a little bit more private. That or it'll be a cat and mouse chase like cname cloaking/proxying rendering those harder to statically detect.
      - Gustomaximus 3y ago
        True for you, but there are billions of people out there and your attitude is a tiny minority for what they would lose elsewhere.
    - dazc 3y ago
      Boss of wonderful search site seems to be unaware?
      - eitland 3y ago
        Unlike Google who has incentives to promote the spam Kagi has incentives to fight the spam. Also Kagi lets me blacklist domains myself if I want stricter rules than Kagi already provide.
  - askvictor 3y ago
    The financial motive is to get people looking at your website so you can sell things. SEO has always been an arms race, and I don't see how it can not be that. Occasionally there's a paradigm shift that causes one side to get massively ahead (e.g. the original Pagerank). But eventually things settle back down.
freediver 3y ago
Kagi founder here. You have my assurance this will not happen. Life is too short and I am not spending 10 years of my life building yet another ad-based search engine.
- selcuka 3y ago
  I trust you will not, but what about after you exit? Anyway, you or someone else will probably start a new search engine, and we will start again. It's best to enjoy it until that happens.
  - pierat 3y ago
    I believe the founder, freediver. In the case of Radio Shack, they too made a promise never to sell or give the data to other entities. The CEO even fought for that in bankruptcy court. The judge deemed that the user data was worth a significant sum, and the judge screwed everyone over for the debtors. Once you capture the data, it's a toxic but valuable asset. And there's always someone willing to go to any end and use it, regardless the promises. And it may full well be someone who has power over you, and you'd never know until it's too late. (I've done my share of medical and sensitive queries. The really sensitive ones go through I2P or Tor in a VM. I'm not willing to give that knowledge to anyone.)
    - mewse 3y ago
      Since you're bringing up "capturing the data", it's worth pointing at Kagi's privacy policy, the very first point of which is this: > * Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account. https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy Additionally the search page itself displays this notice: > Your searches are always private. We do not see them and they are not associated with your account The "captured" user data you seem to be concerned about doesn't appear to actually exist in this case; the data is quite explicitly not being captured.
    - selcuka 3y ago
      > I believe the founder, freediver. Oh, don't get me wrong. I believe them, too. My point was if they ever sell the company, the buyer might change the privacy statement and start collecting/selling information from that point on. I didn't mean the new owners would necessarily have access to the data collected previously.
dgb23 3y ago
All good things do come to an end. There’s no argument here. But I think we’re in a different situation when people are willing to pay monthly for search. There is also exactly 0 risk involved here for a consumer. If this product stops being worth your time and money, just stop using it? It’s not comparable to say, buying a service or product that you build on top of. No lock-in in that sense.